Half a tick

17 May - 3 June 2000

Normally tick followed tock followed tick, but today the clock stopped halfway through its first tick. The end was in sight. Tomorrow no longer fell into today who catapulted into yesterday. The line of events was over. Time had had enough. It wanted to travel every way it could. Past could affect future could affect past could effect now.


The second exhibition in the newly refurbished g39 is a solo show by one of Cardiff’s most interesting and diverse artists. Working with video and sound Michael Cousin explores the space that divides past memory from future expectations.

Cousin pauses and lets us wait for the next step in a given sequence of events leaving the viewer hanging on. He forces us to consider the moment after what has just taken place and before what is expected to happen. The work employs narratives interspersed with pauses, brief periods of rest or hesitation that disrupt the viewers engagement with the sequence of events. Rather than reading the sentence he draws our attention to the full stops.

Events that happen now, this moment, may only affect our future. Things that happened yesterday or years ago can reach out and touch us now. Things of tomorrow lie in wait for our today. At what point are we more or less conscious of it all? All can offer infinite possibility or immanent solidity.

Michael attempts to uncover a peculiar ‘non-site’ in the present, to close the gap between the imagined and the now.

Should we waste precious moments on time passing through us and by us. We pass through time. All of it. Why let it use us? It isn’t really there. We don’t change with time, time changes with us. Wake up and look around. Suspend belief in time, our expectation and fear of it, and we can float on air. Stop, look, and listen. Don’t just look both ways. Look everywhere.

Programme